


A Walk To The End Of The World

by ivorygates



Category: Stargate SG-1
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-07-10
Updated: 2014-07-10
Packaged: 2018-02-08 08:00:17
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,161
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1933074
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ivorygates/pseuds/ivorygates
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Written for the 2013 SG1Friendathon.  Set in S2, after "Family".</p><p><b>Spoilers For:</b> Children of the Gods, Bloodlines, Family, Fair Game, Enemies, Talion, Babylon<br/><b>Prompt:</b> <em>39. Jack and Teal'c. Sometimes -- not usually, but sometimes -- they just need to get away from the geeks.</em></p>
            </blockquote>





	A Walk To The End Of The World

This wasn't where he thought he'd be at 45. Not ten years ago. Ten years ago had been 35: new father, old marriage, just made Colonel. Life was good.

Didn't last. Couldn't last. Never did. It was the one lesson Life had been remarkably consistent about teaching. The one lesson he inevitably forgot. "Good" didn't last. "Bad" couldn't last only because if it did, you'd be dead, so it wasn't a reciprocal state.

He didn't use phrases like that -- or words of more than two syllables -- around Carter. That only convinced her he wanted to _hear_ phrases, and sentences, and entire lectures containing very large words with lots of syllables. Usually about astrophysics, which was bad enough. Worse was when she started using words like "hypothetically". He wasn't a big fan of hypotheticals. Hypothetically, the snakes weren't out to slag Earth. Hypothetically, the mission objective _du jour_ was possible. "Hypothetically" was "good's" cousin: it made trouble and dumped you on your ass in a swamp full of alligators.

He was a simple binary kind of guy. Go here, do this. (Try to) avoid doing that. Get everybody home alive. (Try to.) This required simple answers to simple questions. Will this blow up? How can we make this blow up? What do we do after this blows up?

Carter, bless her little gold oak leaves, wanted to give him _context._ (Choices. Scenarios. _Hypothetical_ scenarios.) Context was bad. He'd learned that lesson in fifteen years of this'n'that. Context meant plausible deniability went right out the window. Something Carter hadn't learned yet. He hoped she never did. (Look on the bright side, O'Neill, you might all be dead first.)

Of course, he outranked her. He could tell her to shut up (in that warm-hearted nurturing way all COs better learn fast), and she usually did. Not that it helped, because there were four people on his team, and one of them was Doctor Pain-In-The-Ass Jackson. Daniel had no sense of self-preservation (noted, documented, bitched about), and that translated inexorably into marathon explanations of _absolutely everything._ The only thing saving O'Neill's sanity, his bird, and (sometimes) Daniel's job was the fact they were so mind-bogglingly irrelevant to whatever SG-1 was doing at any particular time that he didn't have to pretend he hadn't heard them in order to get on with the mission at hand.

Usually. (The ones that didn't turn out that way gave him headaches, nightmares, and a lot of paperwork.) There was also the fact that occasionally Daniel could pull a miracle out of his ass and do it in a single declarative sentence (a talent O'Neill wished he'd cultivate). He didn't understand Daniel. That was the bottom line. Any more than he (really) understood Carter, military or not. Carter and Daniel were ... geeks.

(He had nothing against geeks, but they were high-maintenance.)

A field team (Stargate team, explorer unit, recon force, whatever you wanted to call it) should all be on the same page. Half his team wasn't even in the same _library_.

Of course, then there was Teal'c.

#

The _Tau'ri_ were an endless source of confusion to him. The thing that bothered him most, he thought, was that they rarely seemed to notice how odd they were -- and when they did, they didn't seem to mind.

Life for the Jaffa was much the same no matter which of the False Gods they served. You were a laborer, a warrior, or a priest. There was no other possibility. It was perhaps the only form of efficiency the False Gods practiced, to make the lives of their slaves so predictable, for sometimes (rarely) an enemy's army would be captured in battle and brought to serve a new master. There was nothing of what Daniel Jackson called "culture shock", for there was only one culture. Only the names in the prayers changed.

It had not been difficult at all to learn the worship of Apophis instead of Cronos.

As a child, he had been too stunned by the death of his father to wonder how his mother had transformed exile (such as Drey'auc had suffered in her turn) into a new life elsewhere. They had been meant to suffer and die on Cronos's throneworld. He would have died before his mother, as he had not yet received the gift of his first _prim'ta_. Or she might have given up they symbiote she carried to give him life, and died in his place, and left him to become the prey of other outcasts.

Instead, she had brought him, miraculously, to Chulak, buying them new lives by whispering Ronac-his-father's secrets into Master Bra'tac's ear. All Teal'c had seen was the path to revenge: become a great warrior, become First Prime of his new master, humble the armies of the god who had slain his father.

He did not yet understand that the gods were false, but he knew even as a child that they were cruel.

Their cruelty was so great that for many years, his own lesser evils were invisible to him. Thus it was that he led Apophis's armies against those of Lord Atum without thought for anything but victory. When Atum's armies fled, Teal'c destroyed Co'rak, leaving nothing alive on Atum's throneworld. This was what Jaffa did, and he was Jaffa. His thoughts were still fixed upon the day he would do the same to Cronos. But Arkad, First Prime of Atum, did not blame Apophis for the loss of his family. He blamed Teal'c. He used his position to send an assassin to Chulak, and when Teal'c returned home in the triumph of his victory, his mother's ashes were already cold and scattered.

Teal'c still did not understand the lesson Bra'tac had tried, so cautiously, so carefully, to teach him. That the gods were cruel and evil he had learned for himself. It did not occur to him that they were not gods at all. It was O'Neill who had called that realization into being, as a spark touched to long-ready tinder. _I can save these people,_ O'Neill said. _Help me._

And in that moment Teal'c knew there were no gods.

He had expected to die in that moment, for all the tales the Jaffa told among themselves spoke of the cost of knowledge. The ancient Sodan Brotherhood had embraced freedom at the cost of ceasing to be Jaffa. Instead he had lived, and come to the First World to fight beside the _Tau'ri_ for the freedom of all.

But the _Tau'ri_ were not warriors. Nor were they laborers or priests. And they did not seem to care that there was no name that could be set upon any of them which told the story of their lives. Daniel Jackson was neither warrior nor priest. He asked endless questions, as if he were a child, and yet he never seemed to be satisfied by the answers. And Major Carter was both warrior and priestess, for she served the thing the _Tau'ri_ called "Science", yet somehow she, too, was neither.

If not for O'Neill, Teal'c would have been wholly lost.

O'Neill was his brother in a way the rest of SG-1 could not be. Daniel Jackson had saved his life, many times, at the risk of his own. Major Carter's bravery and determination were things that would pass into legend if the First World survived. But they were young. They were old enough to understand loss. But they did not know guilt. Not as Teal'c knew it.

Not as O'Neill knew it.

Guilt was the second thing that bound the two of them together when there were so many things to draw them apart. Teal'c did not understand O'Neill's world. It seemed to him to be a place of chaos, violence, limitless choice and dangerous freedom: how could he understand a man shaped by such a world? He suspected that O'Neill, a man half his age, a man who had long believed his crowded world was the entire universe, did not understand him either. O'Neill praised loyalty but condemned revenge. He honored victory but gave mercy. He would not have survived under the rule of Apophis even a year.

But then, a man such as O'Neill would never have been born to Teal'c's world. Even so, they were brothers. For the first thing that bound Teal'c and O'Neill together was death.

The deaths they had given, the deaths they had failed to prevent. The deaths of comrades. The death of soldiers they had ordered into battle, knowing their fate before they marched. Death was a thing each of them had faced all their lives. And when the battle was done, each of them had lived to count the cost, to mourn the dead, to carry the burden of both death and life.

To speak of such a burden was to give it weight enough to crush you, and so they did not. Save in the heat of battle, O'Neill's words were meaningless toys, and Teal'c did not listen. O'Neill's truths, like his own, were shaped and communicated in silences.

And so, knowing nothing of him, Teal'c knew O'Neill very well.

#

It's a beautiful morning here on P3-Technobabble. Lots of bright cloudless sky for anything overhead to spot them (if there's anything up there). Lots of trees to hide, oh, just about anything out to stab, shoot, bludgeon, or just _eat_ them. Not that the Wonder Twins ever seemed to figure that out. "Threat Assessment" -- that was something _other_ people did. Other people usually being him. Or Teal'c. Daniel thought everybody was his new best friend. Carter thought everybody would be reasonable (or be dazzled by Science, or _something_ ). That left one Colonel Jonathan J. "Jack" O'Neill, USAF, to be interstellar Bad Cop. The days when all he had to do to bring all four of them home alive was piss two of them off were the good days.

He walks down the steps of the Gate (he's pretty sure Daniel still thinks it's an "I'm in charge" thing and not a "I would prefer to be first to see who wants to kill us" thing) with the other three behind him. Sure enough, as soon as Daniel spots the folks waiting for them, he ducks under O'Neill's elbow and goes charging to meet them. Since they're wearing BDUs instead of wacky alien armor, O'Neill doesn't mind. Unfortunately, the sight of the Science Guys inspires Carter (who's much too Air Force to go barging past her CO) to start telling him about all the wonderful Science they're doing. (Long-term study, offworld base, benefit to all mankind, one of those little things JCOS can wave around at funding time to indicate they're on the side of peace and freedom and a return on investment.) He stops at the foot of the steps. "Carter. Go. Mingle." He waves, she hurries off, he resolutely finds some other view to admire. Daniel's already explaining things to the welcoming committee. His back is to them, and he's too far away to hear, but his hands are moving like he's signaling incoming air traffic. Business as usual.

Carter catches up to them, and the Geek Patrol heads off for the camp (still talking). Altman and Barber swing out to follow them; SG-5 has babysitting duty. Stands to reason General Hammond wouldn't let a bunch of lab-rats out by themselves. They might forget to come back. (Today's little visit is supposed to run four hours. O'Neill's guessing six. Maybe eight. Maybe he'll have to zat Daniel and have Teal'c carry him back.) Major Castleman ambles over with Lt. Soong at his heels.

"Good to see you, sir. And your team." (Yeah, he can just guess how much Major Castleman loves him for bringing him two more geeks.) They chat a little bit about life here on beautiful Planet Technobabble (Castleman's letting the lab coats get out of earshot; Castleman's no fool) before Castleman indicates they should head on back.

He glances at Teal'c. T's got stone-faced down to a science, but it doesn't take a genius to know he's figuring the odds. Standing around listening to scientists versus a little peace and quiet? No contest.

"Thanks, Major, but I think we'll take the scenic route."

Castleman nods (looking resigned, but O'Neill outranks him and right now he intends to take advantage of that little fact) and smiles and they do a radio check and a GPS check and then he and Soong follow the others. Whatever else you can say about P3-Whatever, it's as safe as any place out here gets. For what that's worth.

But it's a nice day. And it's nice and quiet. So he and Teal'c head out. They'll kill an hour or two and get to the site around lunch time. He feels a little guilty (not much) about ditching Carter and Daniel this way, but he knows T's on the same page. He's good company.

And sometimes you just gotta get away from the geeks.

#


End file.
